108/01
10 October 2001
INVEST TO SAVE PROJECT HELPS REDUCE REOFFENDING
An innovative interagency scheme on Teesside to help prisoners return to the community with a reduced likelihood of reoffending is the overall winner of the first Invest To Save Budget (ISB) 'Progress In Partnership' awards, Chief Secretary Andrew Smith announced today.
The "Prisoners' Passport" project is one of four winning initiatives which show how closer joint working can underpin smarter, better services in diverse areas of the public sector. It offers advice on jobs, housing, health and benefits to inmates due for release in two prisons on Teesside. In its first year, the reconviction rate among 375 prisoners involved in the scheme was around 5%, compared to around 40% nationally. This was achieved with an investment from the ISB scheme of £18,000 to fund a full-time adviser to the project.
Mr Smith said :
"This project is a striking and valuable example of what can be achieved by public sector agencies coming together and pooling resources to deliver better services across the country. It cuts crime by helping prisoners go straight, to the benefit of their families and communities, as well as addressing the financial and social consequences of criminal behaviour.
"Other winning ISB projects support bereaved families in Wolverhampton, help young people into adult life in West Lothian and offer one-stop access to national databases for local authorities and local delivery agencies across the country.
"What all these projects have in common is that they deliver important and innovative public services at local level, directly to citizens and communities. The integrated approach they have used so successfully in these projects is one that all agencies can learn from and adapt to improve their own service delivery.
"These first success stories under the Invest to Save Budget initiative show how a relatively modest investment in drawing agencies together can generate new and better public services. The real winners are those who benefit from these imaginative schemes."
The Prisoners' Passport project works with prisoners preparing for release in Holmehouse and Kirklevington prisons. As well as reducing the likelihood of reoffending, the initiative helps offenders, their families and their communities generally by increasing the chances of their finding work and accommodation, improving skills and opportunities and helping to keep families together.
The awards were presented at 'Joining Forces', the second Invest to Save Budget Conference, held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster.
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The four winning projects and three additional shortlisted projects for the ISB Progress In Partnership awards are:
Winners
Prisoners' Passport : offers an integrated service to prisoners preparing for release, helping them to understand and get maximum support from local agencies involved in housing, employment, health and benefits services.
Partners include the Prison Service; Probation Service; Employment Service; Benefits Agency; Citizens Advice Bureaux; and local authorities.
Wolverhampton Bereavement Centre : a range of bereavement services together in one place, minimising distress for relatives and families at a difficult and vulnerable time.
Partners include hospitals and hospices; Age Concern; funeral directors; registrars, coroners, probate and Inland Revenue offices; and local authority services (housing, social services, community charge and environmental services). This range of services helps families to follow through the sequence of events and tasks involved in dealing with a bereavement.
West Lothian 'Schools Out' Project : an innovative multi-media classroom package to prepare young adults and help them bridge the gap between school and the adult world, providing them with the practical information and guidance they need to take their place in society.
Partners include the Student Awards Agency for Scotland; Careers Service; Employment Service; West Lothian Council; Inland Revenue; and Benefits Agency.
info4local Project : a single gateway for central Government Departments and agencies and local authorities and services to distribute, request and exchange information, with twice daily direct to desk e-mail alert service for new information. The service is available and used extensively by public sector agencies tackling the current foot and mouth disease outbreak.
Partners include DTLR, DES, DoH, DWP and the Home Office in central Government, and local authorities in Arun, Hampshire, Knowsley, Lewisham, Southend and Surrey. The project has 10,000 subscriber users across the UK.
ShortlistedNottingham Partnership : offers online information and speeds up dealing with minimum income guarantee, housing benefit, educational maintenance allowance, and residential care entitlements for pensioners, students and care home residents, with the first residential care home remote access terminal for internet access.
Partners include Nottingham City Council, the Benefits Agency and Employment Service.
Southwark Antisocial Behaviour project : supports thematic initiatives to reduce offending behaviour, including drug dealing, graffiti and vandalism, and supports victims by tackling perpetrators through mediation, warning letters, acceptable behaviour contracts, injunctions, eviction and anti-social behaviour orders when other means have failed.
Partners include Southwark Council services; Metropolitan Police; Southwark Mediation Service; Victim Support; Inner London Probation Service; Southwark Housing Association Group.
32/2 live fish database : seeks to prevent and control outbreaks of serious fish diseases by creating an interactive electronic database of information and guidance on relevant legislation, fish movements and illegal importation and theft. The project is seen as a model that can be adaptable to help businesses and communities in a range of similarly structured activities involving large scale movement of animals or products.
Partners include DEFRA, National Assembly for Wales Agriculture Department (NAWAD), the Environment Agency and the Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS).
2. Invest to Save Budget (ISB) is a joint Treasury/Cabinet Office initiative announced in the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review. It was launched by Chief Secretary Alan Milburn and Dr Jack Cunningham, Minster for the Cabinet Office, on 13 January 1999 (Cabinet Office press release CAB 7/99).
3. ISB provides support for projects which will increase joint working between Government Departments, local government, voluntary sector and other agencies to identify innovative ways of delivering better quality public services on a better value for money basis. Three phases of projects have been funded so far, with a fourth currently being finalised.
4. It is expected that a total of £380million will be spent on ISB projects in five rounds between 1999 and 2004. The first round focused on central Government Departments and their agencies; the second and third rounds involved local authorities, police and fire authorities, health authorities, non-departmental public bodies and public corporations; round four will extend to voluntary organisations. Details of round five have yet to be announced.
5. Bids for funding are assessed by a committee, chaired by the Treasury and with Cabinet Office representation, using a pre-determined set of criteria including breadth of partnership, degree of innovation. The committee makes funding recommendations to the Chief Secretary and the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
6. Projects have to agree an implementation plan with the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. Each project has to provide six-monthly progress reports and carry out an evaluation of its success once it has been completed. Projects running for longer than a year also have to carry out an interim evaluation exercise.
7. The 'Progress in Partnership' competition was held to bring forward further data on the development of the programme, and, through the winners, to actively recognise the work that is being done.
8. Media enquiries about the Invest to Save Budget initiative should be addressed to Charles Keseru in the Treasury press office on 020 7270 5188.